I love it, but do customers too?
I love how this solution is this easy to implement, and how this brings the ease of a modern workspace with a fitting printing solution on the user end.
The experience to the user is simply amazing, and I think is took some real effort on Microsoft’s end.
So, they did nice work on that.
However, there are some limitations:
Follow me or badge printing are simply not possible for now.
Physically added paper bins can’t be added.
Auto-stapling is not available.
I understand that these are added functionality by the printer manufacturers, but organizations have bought these machines fitting to their printing needs, you can’t take this away by implementing this.
And it’s all because you don’t have a native print driver.
Don’t get me wrong, I hate native printer drivers.
Without driver isolation on, you can destroy printing for so many clients.
Especially in large organizations, this has been an enormous issue.
Something you can’t blame Microsoft for, because it was simply bad programming on the printer manufacturers end.
Alot of them where using legacy shared components (a lot of printer drivers used old HP LaserJet Components, which would conflict and make peoples print spoolers crash in the past).
I think a wide alliance with Printer Manufacturers is necessary to make this happen, since we can only implement this in doctors’ offices or organizations where there are as many printers as people.
However, I love how this really brings an end to crashing print spoolers and printer configuration issues.
As companies are getting increasingly paperless, this solution gets more fitting by time, I think.
For legacy organizations, with comprehensive printing requirements, I think we may also have to start thinking about other ways to make sure printing is implemented in a fitting way.
Being creative has been a real help before, a lot of solutions are available, so maybe this will be a big competitor too.